Previews

Turok

Spiffy:

Ridiculous, wonderful violence; cool dinosaurs; big environments.

Iffy:

Killing space marines; paper-thin story.

Turok is half about using your knife and bow to kill people, half about using dinosaurs and people to kill each other. It's a bloody, joyous sandbox with, from our recent hands-on time, no higher goal than to be a kickass game where you kill people with dinosaurs and a knife. We were disappointed with the tutorial segments set in an underground cave network, but beyond that we still had a great time with the most recent build of Turok.

There's Nothing Like Dinosaur Alt-Fire

Once you're out of the bland, difficult-to-navigate caves, gameplay opens up to pure bloody fun. Swapping weapons with the d-pad, we experimented with a variety of single- and dual-wield layouts, but the majority of the guns are sci-fi schlock, no better or worse than in any other games. The shotgun alt-fire, the knife, and the bow are the standout exceptions. Pointlessly brutal, wonderful exceptions.

The alt-fire on the shotgun is a flare, which is an indirect yet awesome weapon. What it does is draw the attention of dinosaurs. They then hunt down whomever is unlucky enough to be near or, god help them, attached to one of the sticky flares. The enemies, generic evil space marines called the "Wolf Pack," will respond in kind. There is no feeling quite like stalking through a massive jungle, siccing dinosaurs and space marines on each other, and picking off stragglers with savage knife or bow kills.

Turok's knife and bow are both silent, making them feel like stealth kills. But there isn't a real stealth engine at play here; if your high-tech, "Jin-Roh" style enemies can get line of sight, they can probably see you. Slinking in crouched and avoiding LOS, however, gives you the chance to one-shot kill enemies with over-the-top attack animations as Turok uses his years of professionally impersonating Rambo to stab the holy hell out of anyone he can get the drop on. It's about as stealthy as a drunken football hooligan, and as violently entertaining.

Turok's bow actually is a bit stealthy. Since you can zoom in, pull back a shot for one-shot-kill power, and literally pin enemies to walls in utter silence, it is a good way to whittle down distant foes and it feels very unique. The issue with the other guns isn't that they don't do damage, it's just that they're just like every other sci-fi or near-future gun out there. Screw the silencer onto your SMG and you'll feel like you're back in Vegas, but drop a raptor with a bow in the midst of a sparkling jungle and there's no confusion. You're in Turok land, where enemies are for pinned to walls and dinosaurs are lethal weapons.

Our impressions of Turok so far are unrelentingly positive, and our extended play time is no exception. It looks like Propaganda game's first title will be a fun one, even if we do keep expecting to find out that Turok was persecuted by a small-town sheriff at some point.